Mediation

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►The details are provided below, but the take-home message is that the Baron & Kenny method is the one most often used but has some limitations, the Sobel test is more accurate but has low statistical power, and Bootstrapping is the preferred method because it's the only test that doesn't violate assumptions of normality (and it's recommended for small sample sizes). The same applies to Multiple mediation and Reverse mediation.

Whenever possible the links to helpful articles and websites about mediation are posted below, including a link to the Preacher website and Hayes website which has macros for SPSS and SAS that do everything you need because they provide output simultaneously for the (1) Baron & Kenny method, (2) sobel method, and (3) bootstrapping method. Macros exist for both simple mediation (click here for macro) and multiple mediation (click here for macro).

Most argue that only Step 2 & 3 are required because the initial correlation between the IV and DV (step 1) is not essential, and the finding of a subsequent n.s. correlation between the IV and DV (step 4) is only necessary for arguing complete mediation (see below).

Complete (or perfect) mediation occurs when path c' decreases to zero. Partial mediation occurs when c' decreases to nontrivial amount but not to zero. See (Shrout & Bolger, 2002) page 432 for the four reasons why partial mediation may occur.

Sobel Test

What is this?

The Sobel test determines the significance of the indirect effect of the mediator by testing the hypothesis of no difference between the total effect (path c) and the direct effect (path c' ). The indirect effect of the mediator is the product of path ab which is equivalent to (c - c' ).

The Sobel test is superior to the Baron & Kenny method in terms of all the limitations of the B&K method discussed above (e.g., power, Type I error, suppression effects, addressing the significance of the indirect effect).

How do you conduct this test (conceptually)?

Determine the standard error of the indirect effect.

Divide the ab path by the standard error of the indirect effect.

The ratio is compared to critial value from standard normal distribution for a given alpha level (i.e., treated as Z-test).

How do you conduct this test (in practice)?

There is an easy-to-use Sobel test calculator posted online by Kristopher J. Preacher. Just run regression analyses in SPSS (or similar statistical program) and input the requested numbers into the online calculator, OR

Preacher and Hayes also offer a macro that calculates the Sobel test directly within SPSS and SAS.

The assumption for conducting the Sobel test (like most tests in psychology) is that the sampling distribution is normal. Hundreds of articles in statistical journals have shown that assumptions of normality are usually violated, especially in small samples, leading to reduced ability to detect true relationships amongst variables (see (Wilcox, 1998), (Wilcox, 2003), and (Wilcox, 2005) for more information).

Bootstrapping

What is this?

Bootstrapping is a way to overcome the limitations of statistical methods that make assumptions about the shape of sampling distributions, such as normality. It is becoming the preferred method for analyzing data.

How do you conduct this test (conceptually)?

See (Shrout & Bolger, 2002) for details, but basically bootstrapping involves repeatedly randomly sampling observations with replacement from the data set and computing the statistic of interest in each resample. Over many bootstrap resamples, an empirical approximation of the sampling distribution of the statistic can be generated and used for hypothesis testing.

How do you conduct this test (in practice)?

Preacher and Hayes offer a macro that calculates bootstrapping directly within SPSS and SAS.

The syntax in Mplus for a simple mediation model with 5000 bootstrapped samples is shown below. The important bits are bolded.

TITLE:

data from Preacher and Hayes figure 2

satis: satisfaction

therapy: therapy

0: standard

1: cognitive

attrib: attributional positivity

DATA:

File is figure2data.dat ;

VARIABLE:

Names are satis therapy attrib;

ANALYSIS:

Bootstrap = 5000;

MODEL:

attrib ON therapy ;

satis ON attrib therapy;

MODEL INDIRECT:

satis IND attrib therapy;

OUTPUT:

cinterval (bcbootstrap);

SEM

What is this?

Structural Equation Modeling is a statistical technique for simultaneously analyzing the relationships among multiple IVs and DVs by building and testing different models of the data. There are various programs for conducting SEM including EQS, AMOS, and LISREL.

SEM offers many of the same tests listed above (Sobel test, bootstrapping), but can also control for measurement error and provides greater flexibility in model design.

How do you conduct this test (conceptually)?

SEM tests significants of indirect effects similar to the Sobel test.

How do you conduct this test (in practice)?

The details of conducting SEM is beyond the scope of this page, and there are many helpful books/articles on how to analyze data using SEM.

Multiple Mediation

When you have more than one mediator, you can either conduct separate simple mediational analyses for each mediator, or examine all mediators within the same model.

It is recommended that you conduct simultaneous multiple mediation because you can determine both if an overall effect exists for all mediators (total indirect effect) and the effect of each mediator (specific indirect effects). Plus, you can determine the unique effect of each mediator while controlling for the other mediators.

The same issues discussed above with respect to simple mediation also apply to multiple mediation, so its recommended to use the macro posted on Hayes's website to conduct multiple mediation within SPSS and SAS.

Moderated Mediation

What is it?

Moderated mediation refers to testing mediational models for different groups (e.g., control group versus condition group, males versus females, etc) or different levels of a continuous moderator variable. If the magnitude of the indirect effect changes significantly across values of a moderator, that's moderated mediation.

How to do it

The article by Muller, Judd & Yzerbyt (2005) provides an in-depth explanation as does Preacher, Rucker, and Hayes (2007). You can find the Muller et al. paper here and the Preacher et al. paper here